TheBanyanTree: the perfect peel

[Pam Lawley]

Beautiful.

Wow.  Really nice writing Jules!!

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu>wrote:

> I used to be amazed at the things my grandmother could do with her
> hands.  Stick them in the hottest water.  Peel an apple with a regular
> knife, keeping the entire peel intact in a long green spiral thin as a
> leaf.  I'd ask her, every time we made pie together, to please try and make
> it come off in one piece.  How do you do that, grandma!  How do you peel
> toward your thumb and not cut your thumb?  How do you snap beans that fast
> without even looking or leave that tiny neat hole where the stem of the
> strawberry used to be?  I was the dish dryer and she the dishwasher and I'd
> squeal at the hotness of the water that was nothing to her as I reached in
> to grab the next plate.
>
> Last night I thought about all these things as I deftly peeled an apple,
> knife slipping just barely beneath its skin, until the entire thing curled
> in the sink in a single piece.  I now realize that grandma could do this,
> and I can do this, because like her, I've peeled thousands of apples.  I've
> made thousands of pies, snapped more beans than I can remember, washed
> thousands of plates and pans from thousands of home cooked meals in water
> hot enough to make my sons cringe and cry out.  My hands are starting to
> look like hers.  My fingers are getting twisted, the veins on the backs of
> my hands pop out, and there are a few scars because, like grandma, I've
> worked decades of gardens, fixed hundreds of ripped seams and missing
> buttons, hung out endless lines of laundry on an endless number of sunny
> days, cut towards my thumb and missed a few times, and wrung my hands in
> caring over those I love.  I realized, now, that the miracle of her hands
> was not the trick of making that single perfect peel, but in all the
> purposeful and joyful living that went into being able to tickle my
> amazement by doing it perfectly for me.
>
> Julie
> In honor of the everyday presence of the spirit of my loving grandmother,
> Myrtle Arla Lindsey Taylor, October 5th 1905 - February, 1993.
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